Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - Rebuild Your Relationship From Rock Bottom | Dr. John Delony, MA, PhD

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

🚨Buckle up, besties—this episode is a gut punch and a warm hug. I’m sitting down with Dr. John Delony—viral relationship advice sensation and emotional wellness expert—for a raw conversation on what’s really breaking down our relationships. 💔🧠Author, mental health pro, and host of The Dr. John Delony Show, John’s helped thousands navigate marriage meltdowns, burnout, resentment, and the stuff we don’t say out loud—like what to do when you’re no longer attracted to your spouse.✨Loving someone well starts with being emotionally well yourself. Let’s talk about it.👇Thank you to our sponsors! 😊Geviti | Use code "ALEX" to get 20% OFF of your first purchase and skip the waitlistCowboy Colostrum | Use code “ALEX” for 25% OFFActive Skin Repair | Use code 'ALEX' for 20% OFFCozy Earth⁠ | Use code "ALEX" for 40% up to OFFHarvest Right Freeze DryingPrimally Pure | Use code “ALEXCLARK” to get 15% OFFOur Guest:⭐️ Dr. John Delony, MA, PhDInstagram YouTube TikTok X Facebook 🧠 Dr John's Book 🧠 Questions for HumansFAVORITE BOOK ⭐️ Top Tip | Turn off all the screens and have personal experiences with people who are in the margins of your community. From there, ask: How can I love and serve them?🎀Follow Alex🎀Instagram |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@cultureapothecary⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@realalexclark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@yoalexrapz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcast |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark⁠⁠⁠⁠🗞️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠WEEKLY NEWSLETTER SIGNUP⁠⁠⁠⁠New 'Culture Apothecary' Merch OUT NOW! Glass tumblers, weekly wellness planners, hats, crewnecks and more. Use code "Alex Clark" for 10% OFF at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ tpusamerch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the Cuteservatives Facebook group to connect with likeminded friends who love America and all things health and wellness!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the CUTEservative Facebook Group!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.This show is made possible with generous donations from listeners who believe in our mission to heal a sick culture.You can support our show by leaving a tax deductible donation⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or by subscribing to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @RealAlexClark⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube for FREE!#DrJohnDelony #AlexClarkPodcast #CultureApothecary #ChristianRelationshipAdvice #MarriageBurnout #EmotionalWellness #RelationshipRedFlags #FaithAndFemininity #NotAttractedToSpouse #ChristianMentalHealth

How can a marriage get back to what it was before my spouse cheated? You will never, quote unquote, get back. That's over. The question is, do you want to build something totally new? And is that hard? Yes. Is it challenging? Yes.

Is it scary? Yes. Can you do it? It could be amazing. What is a habit that you and your wife have that you think has tremendously strengthened your marriage? Asking each other every day, what's your picture of today look like? That's been probably the greatest gift.

Beneath religion, money, beliefs, political. The number one characteristic that determines whether you have a good marriage or not, are y'all friends? Does your husband refuse to change diapers because that's your job? Is your girlfriend's messiness making you question if she's wife material? And how often is normal for parents of young kids to be having sex? How are you supposed to tell your spouse that you aren't attracted to them anymore? And why would a guy tell you that he's obsessed with high-earning women when you first get together,

only to throw it back in your face later? These are just a few of the raw, unfiltered, audience-submitted questions I ask, Dr. John Deloney, viral relationship advice sensation and one of the most trusted voices in emotional wellness today. Before joining Ramsey Solutions in 2020, Dr. Deloney spent over two decades in crisis response in higher education, earning two PhDs along the way. Now he's a national bestselling author and the host of the Dr. John Deloney show, where he helps real people navigate everything from marital blowups to personal burnout. Whether you're deep in a relationship crossroads, or you're just trying to figure out how to not lose yourself while loving someone

else. This conversation is packed with wisdom, tough love, and a whole lot of real talk. This is a must-watch episode with your significant other. This is a multi-camera, beautifully shot podcast on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify, so make sure you watch it on your TV or your phone. Follow the show on Instagram for additional content at Culture Apothecary and join the cute servitude's Facebook group where the girlies get into tons of additional discussions after the episodes. I'm on Instagram too, by the way, at Real Alex Clark. After this episode, when your mind is blown and your face is melted off, leave a five-star review saying so, please and thanks. Now, please welcome Dr. John Deloney to culture apothecary.

That's all that. So now we really know each other so we can really start. Gosh. People who weaponize the Bible give me gas. It literally, it makes me, it's like, it's the worst thing to weaponize. You know what I mean? It is the worst thing to weaponize. People take the Bible and they take it to mean I should never feel uncomfortable. And if I feel uncomfortable, I can go to this book and find a verse that validates my discomfort and I can blame you for it. Yeah. That's such an evil way to use that text.

And I mean, there's so much, you know, for both the man and woman, so many amazing standards on how we're supposed to conduct relationships and a marriage and all of that. Like, it's hard for the woman. We have stuff that we have to do. But also. Everyone has stuff they have to do. The man has to answer to God himself and be willing to die for his wife. Like, you know.

Yeah, that's the part after the submission verse is, and you be ready to lay it all down. Yes. Including your ego. Yeah. And including your, I don't even know where the catch up is. And she has to tell me the ketchup is because I'm too busy and I can't see it. You feel like all that down. Yeah.

It's a race to service who can out serve the other person, not who can out tell the other person. You, like, makes me crazy, man. Explain that. Like, what should the biblical. way of leadership for a man really look like. It's in marriage, but it's also in friendship, and it's also in running a company, and it's also in being a neighbor.

Leadership is a race to the bottom. A true leader doesn't talk, doesn't have to talk very much. They're underneath the squat rack holding the whole thing up. When you think of leadership is, I'm on top of this thing, and I'm above all of you guys, and everyone has to do what I say now,

that's not leadership. That's a child. That is, I'm taking my truck and going home. That's not leadership. And that is a race to service. That is a race to the humblest position possible. What percentage of marriages do you think are actually salvageable? Outside of extreme abuse and just narcissistic loony tunes,

any couple can sit down and swipe the table clean and say, the marriage we had is over. You and I can choose to build something new today. One of my favorite marriage quotes of all time is from Esther Perel. She says, most adults have four or five great loves in their adult lifetime. and if you work really hard, that will be with the same person. Oh, I love that. I'm a radically different man than the 24-year-old knucklehead that my wife married.

Thank God, right? And I'm only better because she has continued to iron sharpens iron and has continued to stay in the fire and saying, I see something you don't even see and has continued to call me out when I need to be called out and continue to say, I'm going to stay in this when it's hard. And when I start getting sideways to say, you know, I love you too much. It's not this. If it had just been, you will do what I say.

My marriage would have been over 20 times. So is it because of your own marriage redemption story that now you're in this business of talking about money and relationships and all of this? Or no, like why do this with your career? I wanted to be like known as a smart guy. Like I was so insecure. I just wanted everyone to know like how dopamine and serotonin interacted, right? And when I stepped into a more public space, people didn't care about that. They're like, dude, I got any human for that.

I don't need you for that. I love my wife. I love my husband and I don't know how to connect. Or the world tells me that there's this thing that relationships, quote, unquote, run their course. And I think we've run our course. And so I don't know what to do next, right? And so then it just became listening to folks showing up and showing up and showing up and showing up saying, how can you help? And yes, I had my own.

The funniest one is there was a big, like, we can't be married like this any more moment. And what year was that in your marriage? How long have you been married? Well, this is the funny joke. 23 years in July. Okay. And so, but the funny story was I brought my wife to a live event once and she came on stage and she was doing Q&A with the audience. And I said, all right, so there was this one time.

And I started telling that story. And she goes, we've done that like five times. And I was like, okay, I wasn't going to tell them all of them. So it's happened a lot to where we say, okay, the marriage we had is now over. We have a kid now. That season was awesome. and we have a new marriage now. We have two kids now.

We've been through three miscarriages in between those. We didn't know how to do grief together because I grieve one way, she grieved another way. So the marriage we had is over now. Will you build a new one with me? And I think what were couples get stuck is they say, till death was part, and they put a stake in the ground. And they say, you can never change and I can never change.

And then that's not how life works. Everybody changes. Everybody grows up. Everybody learns something new. and it's that experience. Can we learn new stuff together? Do you ever go through like a really difficult disagreement at home and then have to come into the studio and then give relationship advice and feel like a little bit like imposter syndrome? Yes and no. I'm not perfect to agree. I'm a train rack. And I think it's, I don't like the idea that I give advice for a living. I like the idea that I sit with hurting people for a living.

And I could say, I did that 10 years ago. Here's how it worked out for us. And it was not a good move on my part. or I've dangled over the edge of blowing my whole marriage up, man, here's some ways if you go upstream to not put yourself in that position. And when you do blow it up, you can pull up a seat and I'll sit with you. And I was telling your team earlier, I, lifelong Christian, lifelong churchgoer, I've become very critical of churches in the past few years because the number of people who call my show that we edit this part out, but I'm like, hey, why are you calling me? Like, I'm a stranger on the internet.

Oh, like, why didn't you go to your pastor? Why don't you go to anybody? And the number one response I get is, dude, I got nobody. I'm like, don't you go to, you have a local church? Yeah, but I got nobody. It's this problem of churches are not taking the shepherding role seriously and the discipleship role seriously, I think. Like, you have these small groups and stuff at churches, and then you could just, like,

not show up for a month and nobody calls you to say, hey, man, we missed you. Like, where have you been? Like, nobody's following up on these people or these couples are pouring into them. I don't have another word for it, but it's kind of manufactured. Yeah. Right? And you have to. to develop, you have to do life together so that you can have the space to sit down and say,

hey, dude, I did something stupid. Or I said something dumb last night. And I shouldn't have said that. And I don't even know how to come back from that. I'm not going to have that level of vulnerability with six couples that I got assigned at my local. You know what I mean? The strongest marriages that I know in my life, they all have an older couple mentor. Always. Okay, so that's not crazy. No. Like, think about it this way. The Navy Seals are. Gangsters. They're astonishing in what they're able to do and none of them would enter into a combat situation that they've trained for. They know the terrain. They know everything. They know all the people without people looking out for them who have been there before, who are looking

eyes in the sky, who are watching where they can't see yet and giving them feedback and support. That would be madness. Yet we think if we ask somebody like, hey, I need some help or I did this wrong or I said this stupid, that you don't have some couples who have been there before. That's just wisdom. It's just wisdom. It's arrogance and ego that prevent people from sitting down and saying, I need some coaching or I need some support. And I've been in that situation where I'm like, we're fighting so much about the same topic. We clearly are incapable of meeting just us to talk this out. Like, can we please reach out to another, like, loving couple that loves you and me to talk this through? And, you know, them just being like, that's nuts. Why would you do?

that. So I think that's a hard, hard place to be in when you are somebody who wants to seek that help out, but your significant other doesn't. I can't tell you how grateful I am that I'm not dating now. Yeah. It's chaos. It's a zoo. It's madness, right? And there's such a, it's such a strange place to connect now that when there's any sort of connection, you just want to fast forward all of the discomfort and awkward and get to this magic place where you cross this finish line. And I didn't realize that saying I do and putting a ring on somebody's finger and having her put a ring on my finger, that was a starting line. And I thought that was the, I thought we got across the line. Like we're here.

And it's like, oh, no, no, no, no. The race just started. What do you think about this theory going around the internet that men don't meet a woman and think she's the one? They just decide, okay, I'm ready for marriage. And whoever the woman is that is like available in their life, then they're just like, then I'll marry her. because now I'm ready for marriage. I think that's silly. But I think the myth of the one is it's not founded scientifically.

It's not real. It's a myth. And yet I think that it can be callous to look at somebody and be like, I can marry anybody. I'll choose you. Right? That's not the princess story, right? That's not the clouds parted. I did my wife for five years.

You know why? Because I grew up in college. I was in college when Goodwell hunting was out and when Titanic was out. And my wife was amazing, brilliant, beautiful, super loyal, fun, but there weren't like trumpet sounding. And I kept thinking, okay, she's amazing, but she's not that. She's not this, quote unquote, the one. My granddad died, I think 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago now. Him and my grandmother were married 72 and a half years. And when he died, my grandmother's a riot. She's amazing. But she was like, He couldn't wait in 18 more months.

We could get 75. She's awesome. But I realized, oh, when he died, she lost half of herself. And they got married right before World War II. And then he went off to the war. And then they raised four kids and went through loss, all that stuff. They became soulmates, but only in the rearview mirror. You can't front end that.

Does that make sense? And I think the lie of the last 25 years is culture tells us you find the soulmate and then go do life. And really, you find someone that you love and you're connected with. and you all have similar values, and then you'll say, I will never give up on you if you'll never go upon me, and then you go make it happen. So is it fair to say that you don't really believe in the concept of being in love? It's just that love is a choice always from day one. I think it's both the end. I think there are seasons when I love you deeply, and I don't like you. But I mean, that's real in any relationship we have. You have that in friendships. You have that

in parent-child relationships? Yes. You know what I mean? You're making that with your boss? Yes. I'm annoyed with you. I'm coming to work today because you signed my paychecks, and I'm tired. Yep. But I'm going to go do the next right thing. And I think our culture has told us that really the most important thing is how you feel. And if you don't feel, quote unquote, alive, you don't feel that super connection. You don't feel the butterflies, then it's probably over. And by the way, somebody in the office will laugh at your jokes. Or they'll be like, you look really good. And you'll get that feeling again. And you'll think, oh, that's what that is. That means this is over. And I should maybe you start pursuing this. And that's not love. It's just not love. It's not love scientifically. It's

not love spiritually. It's not love. It's not true. It's just a feeling. It's just a feeling. What should more men know about the way that women operate? Oh, you tell me that. I'm just a dumb Texan. I don't know. What have you learned in your marriage about what works for your wife and what doesn't when it comes to communication and probably the most common thing I hear and that I personally experience is, yes, providing is awesome. The latest data I just read said that for the first time, 25 to 35-year-old women on aggregate are making more money than men do in that same field. Yeah, this is hard. It's hard because the, the, what I'll call the, the internet model for masculinity is providing. But they don't tell you, providing doesn't

always mean money. Sometimes providing is emotional stability. Sometimes providing is just a listening year. And it took me almost 15 years of being married before I realized, oh, my wife likes that I work really hard and she likes my work ethic and she likes that I went to a bunch of grad school. She likes that. But she loves me. And I didn't realize the layers I had that I didn't think I was worthy of being loved just for being, right? Because men are told your value is. and what you do. And it took me a long time to realize, oh, she loves me. And that doesn't give me an excuse to not go work hard and to not be a person who sits at the table and provides. But most men I know when their wives, who happen to be C-sweet people or their executives too, or maybe

they're not executives, but kind of make the same amount of money when she says, this is happening at work and this is happening at work, guys think, oh, the only value I can add here is to solve this problem for her. My wife was Dr. Deloni before me. She's way smarter than me. She doesn't need me to solve her problems. What she needs is to be present and to listen. And I didn't have a skill set for that. What do you think more women need to know about the way men operate?

For all of human history, men had, they went out and they did stuff shoulder to shoulder. You've all heard that. Women connect kneecap to kneecap and men connect shoulder to shoulder, right? I got to go do stuff with a group of guys to go forward. And only then, after we have built a thing, we've saved a thing, we've protected a thing. can I look at you and tell you, I miss my wife and kids. If I was to sit down at the table with a group of strange men that I just met, and I'm like, hey, guys, I've been having kind of a low month.

Like, I'm not feeling great. I don't feel good in my career. They would all go, all right, bro. All right, dude. And so here's what's happening in marriages. If men are having sex in their marriage, that is their entry point to, this is okay for me to then be emotionally available. Because I know that this is okay.

That's the only path I have is some sort of physical connection that says, okay, now I can fully be present. And on the other side, for all of human history, sex meant possibly childbirth, and up until a few hundred years ago, that meant maybe death or that meant I have a responsibility for the rest of my natural life that you don't have. And so I have to know that you're in this socially. I have to know that you're in this emotionally with me before we do this thing. And so what I'm seeing as a crash of I can't be vulnerable and emotionally safe until I know it's physically safe. Okay. And I can't be physically intimate with you until I know this is emotionally safe. And you get this crash. Yeah, because a lot of women will start withholding sex because they're not

getting those emotional needs. It's this weird cycle. It's just, it's the dance. It's just a figure eight. So it's sitting down at the table and saying, what skills do I not have? And I personally think this starts with men, being able to sit down and say, I have to trust you that this, relationship is safe. And if I tell you that I'm scared about something, you're not going to leave or you're not going to freak out. Bernay Brown talks. She's so exquisite about this that women often don't have the capacity to hold male vulnerability. So men learn, I can't tell my wife that I'm worried about finances. I can't because then she looks at me kind of like, you're less than, right? So I just, I've learned to be quiet. So if there is financial struggles happening in a relationship,

what is the best way for a woman to respond when your husband, opens up to you about that. I think be able to hold that space and it's a scary, heavy space. Just listening and just trusting that he's going to figure out what to do? No. It's being able to say, can we do this together? Okay. If he has the courage to sit down and say, I'm not all right to lean into that and not go, right? I don't have a picture of what this looks like. My dad never sat down and said, hey, kids, I'm worried about what's coming next. We don't have a picture of that. And that's a scary place to be, right? The way I talk about this often is it's pictures and words. We think in pictures, but we speak in words.

And so here's a silly example. My wife comes up to me and says, this Friday, super hot date. You and me. Well, dude, like my week's over. Like, oh, it's Monday. I'm already thinking that what are we going to be wearing for how long, where are we going? What hotel are we going to end up at? What about the kids? Who cares about the kids? It'll be fine. Then Friday rolls around and I shower again twice in a day, right? Which I don't ever do. And I shave and I put on nice clothes that fit. And she comes out in running shorts and a T-shirt. shirt and she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, what are you doing? And she's like, dude, it's seven tacos for $10 at Taco Barn. It's, it's our, it's our night. And for her hot date was tacos and karaoke and we're going to be eating outside. And it's in Nashville and it's 100 degrees outside in the summer. And for me, hot date. We both use the word date, but we had a different picture. And now I'm frustrated and I feel rejected. Oh, you don't want to spend an evening in a hotel with me. And she's like, that's all you think about. I just want to spend time with you. And we flew past each other. And here's the, the kicker is, if I had said, I'm going to

pick you up and we're going to go on a weekend away, I got childcare for us and we're going to have a great time. She would love that. And if she told me on Monday, dude, seven tacos, 10 bucks, I'd be like, dude, I'm in. I'm going to eat my body weight in nachos. I would love that. It was just different expectations. We just talked past each other. Yeah. Yeah. I just got a picture of what that is. You just got a picture. So a question my wife and I ask every day of our lives is, what's your picture of tonight look like? And when she says, I just need some time. I used to think, oh, that's cool. So after dinner, after the kids are in bed, after this, I won't hassle you.

Now time I know, okay, cool, I'm in help with bedtime. Let me pick up dinner tonight or let me make dinner tonight with the kids and you just go write, right? My wife's a writer. And it's getting that picture aligned. And then, man, if couples get their pictures aligned, it almost always either illuminates what's the real problem here or everybody's happy and they just move on with their life. Somebody asked me to have you tell the Bricks analogy. What is that? The Bricks analogy came from, it started with me looking at the research on the chronic pain

challenges in our culture. And how much of that is psychological and origin. How much of that like basic CBT therapy often helps back pain and neck pain and knee pains. And the more I dug into that, the more I got to like trauma that you were born into, like you're born into poverty, born into dad left, born into all these child, like abusive homes or whatever. And the analogy is we're all born with a backpack. And sometimes you're born out of the gate with two cinder blocks in that thing. And so you're walking around trying to do math homework and you're trying to show up and be kind. And you're trying to go to Sunday school.

But you're carrying this around and going home is not a safe place. Or you have nothing. You're born with an empty backpack. And you think this is just how life is for everybody. And you're like, why can't you all just do, right? And then your best friend passes away. and life drops a brick in your backpack. The analogy is both people are carrying stuff around

and we meet each other at a restaurant and we're like, hi, my name is John, how my name is so-and-so. And we don't realize that we're carrying that stuff around. And our life's work is figuring out what's in that backpack, what can we set down? And if you don't, you will hand that backpack off to your kids. And I think now we have a generation of people

carrying two or three generations worth of backpacks and people our age are just fried. We're cooked. And now we start just pointing fingers at everybody as to why we're so uncomfortable, why we're so exhausted. It must be your fault. Must be your fault. And that's a tough place to find ourselves, both individually and in our marriages and our culture. I used to have a graveyard of half-used vitamins on my counter, magnesium I didn't need, iron that upset my stomach, and things I bought just because, well, I saw them on Instagram. Total chaos. Then I started Jevity and everything changed. Jevity is a biomarker testing company, and they start with an at-home blood test. No labs, no

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Ask it for a friend. Yeah, ask you for a friend. But I want to start with this one. What are some specific examples on how to show your husband you respect him? I think respect has become a very loaded word because I think there is a, I'll call him a group of men, a sliver of men that respect means you never challenge me. You never call me out. You never point out anything, you do what I say. And that's not respect. That's manipulation. That is a power trip. That's an ego. Respect in my world is, I remember an old football coach in Texas telling that's a religion of its own, right? But he was really letting me have it. And I was a good athlete, but I was also kind of lazy. And he was letting me have it and letting me have it. And he saw me

starting to hang my head. And I remember him pulling me aside. And he said, hey, you'll know I don't care about you when I stop trying to hold you to an excellent standard. I've never felt more respected and seen. He's like, I see something in you you don't see and you're 15 and you're a knucklehead. I'm going to keep leaning on you because I see greatness in you. I'm not going to let this ride. My wife, if she truly respects me, she says, hey, that's not how we talk to each other in this house. We agreed on our family values. They're on our wall right here. This is who the Delonies are. And so respect is I see an area where you've announced to the world, and it's more importantly to the world to me, this is who we are, and you're not living that standard. And so I think

respect comes from a sense of shared values and who are we going to be. And in our house, we are to quote my friend Will Godera, unreasonably hospitable. Everybody's welcome at Delany House. We have a cast of characters that we live in Nashville. Everyone's always visiting Nashville. We have some wackadoos that stay with us and we love it. And I think my wife said the other night, 13 or the last 20 nights we've had somebody in our house. And it's awesome. Yeah. And we lead with curiosity over judgment. We lead with, tell me more about that and not that's stupid, right? And so whatever, we can go down a list. And so respect is, hey, this is who we said we were going to be. And like, you're getting real loud. Or I can feel the tension when you're coming home from work.

And what's going on? How can I love you right now? And so what happens if you are kindly saying that to your significant other, you're pointing out something, but then they keep making the mistake. This is unpopular to say, but behavior is a language. And so, what are they telling you? If it happens again and happens again, what they're telling you through their behavior is, I don't care what you say. I don't care that you're trying to help me. I would rather sit in my own, with my own small ego. I would rather try to protect my fragleness by getting loud, getting big and pushing you away, like, or blaming you for my discomfort. Like I said, in this wild, weird dating world we have, when we finally get somebody, anybody off of an app, like a real

person, and it goes to date four, and we're like, okay, this is probably, we're probably getting married, right? When you go from this to this, it's like, where this is happening. It's hard to really land and choose reality, which is, oh, this person through their actions is, doesn't love me. I agree with you. Do you feel like that's a different scenario, though, when you're seven years into marriage versus one year knowing each other, like the grace of working through unlearning some behaviors and things? It's about grace. And it's about saying, okay, I've run the extent of my skill set. And I think we over-dramatize it sometimes. Here's what happened to my house, okay? Dr. DeLone, my wife's a professor. Dr. Delon, I'm a dean of students. And so I'm up 24-7, 365,

dealing with crisis and all kind of stuff with students. My wife's a professor. We have a kid. I remember right out of the gate, she would pump, and I didn't even know what pumping was, but then she was teaching and she said, hey, make sure Hank gets a bottle. My son, Hank, was this big, right? Just a lump of a human. She'd go teach a three hour class and then come back and then she was home all day. And then she'd teach three hour class to come back. I didn't know.

So I just took the bottle out of the fridge and I didn't know to warm it up. I didn't know. And I remember giving him a bottle that was cold out of the fridge and he's shivering while I'm giving it to him. I'm like, I don't think this is right. I've never seen this happen. And I learned very quickly. I didn't know what to do.

And my house became a failure factory. And I didn't have two skillsets. Number one, I didn't know even know what questions to ask. And I was ashamed that I couldn't even take care of my own son. And I didn't know how to be married to a mom. I didn't know that. That was a totally different. That was a foreign thing to me.

And so I knew how to be married to my old girlfriend. I didn't know how to be married to a working mom who was also trying to navigate this and also dealing with her own. I want to be home. but I also want to be a professional. And I don't know how to, like, women have their own failure factory that the world has handed them. You can't win, right? And so here's what I did.

I knew one thing I could do that would help my family, that I could win it. And that was work more. And so I slowly took on another class. Let me adjunct this class. Hey, I'll be a professor on top of my dean of students job. Also being a consultant too. And I knew, okay, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to do this, but I can go make money.

And it was by degrees that we just start doing this. Being separate. I work a little more. Right. And we find each other six inches on the couch, but we're 6,000 miles away from each other. Yeah. And then we sit down and I got my iPad working on a new scheme

and she's scrolling on her phone and you end up trying to do the best you can for each other. And what I had to learn, the skill I had to learn, not to over-dramatize it, the skill I had to learn was how to be uncomfortable asking a question that I think I should know, but I don't know. And just asking for help. Asking for help. Yeah, being vulnerable.

And she had to learn, oh, it doesn't make him stupid or uncaring or an idiot. that he doesn't know that you warm up a bottle for God's sakes, right? Or here's how a diaper works. I don't know. I mean, parents didn't let loud Texan males babysit when I was like, I don't know. I'd never been around a toddler, right? And so it was knowing, oh, he's trying to love both of us the best he knows how. He just doesn't, that's a skill he doesn't have. So it became a, it became about grace. But it started with me saying, where am I uncomfortable and not running from that discomfort, but trying to head right through it. And that just meant I had to get comfortable asking questions of people. What is a normal sex life for a young married couple with two

small children? The old counseling trope that is true is you can either not have sex or you can put it on the calendar. And we've been given this Hollywood story, which is if it's not spontaneous and wild and oh my gosh, then it doesn't count. And what you end up doing is the spontaneous moments with two young kids and two working adults or somebody working and somebody being at home, you're just out of spontaneous moments because the moment you have spontaneity, you both just fall asleep, right? You're just like, I'm out. And so we have to decide we're going to intentionally find moments of time. And this gets a bad rap on the internet's, but there is seasons of survival sex. When we have nine minutes, I'm in if you're in. Yeah. And there's no candles and there's no loud music. And I have my weird stretchy bra and you're wearing sweats with paint stains on them. We're going to go knock this out, right? Because we have to keep having touch points. And we have to remember that's just a season. It's like being in the winter.

And I know you're in Arizona, so you don't have that. But when I'm from, there's like seasons when you wear a coat and it's uncomfortable and it's cold, that's just season. That's just season. Springs coming. Those kids will slowly be able to occupy themselves for an hour. They'll slowly be able to get themselves in and out of the shower. Like it'll come back. But it's just a season.

Someone says, my fiance says his biggest fear is that we won't have sex at least six times a week. Is this realistic? No, it's not. I don't even know to say that. The craziest statistics are married couples have their best sex in their late 40s and 50s. And when you're 26 or you're 31 and you're in your best shape and you think sex is about being really sexy and not being totally insanely connected with somebody and vulnerable. And I don't care about the stretch marks. I think you're beautiful. and I don't care about your weird old beige bra. I don't care.

And I don't care that you have a belly now. You don't have a psychology for that when you're engaged. And so all you can see on the front end is we're going to have sex six times a week. More power to you. It's an unrealistic expectation that you're already framing on the front end. Here's a better expectation. We will always talk about what's right for us in this season. Right?

That's like saying, I never want to live in. Nashville because I'm a shorts guy and a t-shirt guy. All right, cool. But you have never bundled up in the snow and played with kids sled sledding down a mountain. Yeah. You think you love shorts, but you wait until you see your exhausted six-year-old kid climbing back up a mountain with all covered up with snot and snow. That's awesome, right? And so it's just, it's on the front end. Couples ask me all the time, what's the, what's, what's, how much sexual you should be having. I refuse to answer the statistics. Because it just a depends on each situation. Are you able to both say, here's in which we want? Can I tell you

something that's become a bur in my saddle? Yes. I let us say that. It sounds very Texan. Yeah. It's become a thing that has become frustrating for me. Okay. We need food, water and oxygen. And I think we have, and I'll blame me in my community, my mental health community. You have to put your needs out. What do you need? What do you need? When I frame something as a need, I need sex. What I'm doing is I'm making my well-being all your responsibility. And that is a burden that nobody can carry. A way scarier and more vulnerable request is, I want to be with you. That's terrifying.

So if I'm a guy who is scared of my own feelings, it's easier for me to say, I need you to do these five things. It's scarier to say, I want you to do these five things. And guys are always asking me, how do I get off? I feel like after, especially with two kids, sex feels like a chore. How do I get off the chore list? I want her just to desire me. And, man, when you start telling your spouse, like, I need this. Then you go on the chore list.

I need to go to Target. I need to make sure these two kids have their stuff they need. There's snacks for school tomorrow. I need this. I need to, my husband needs sex. I'll put that. It's a different thing when it's like, hey, I want you. And that's a different level of vulnerability.

And it's like, dude, I want you to. And I have these things. It's like, well, I'll do the dishes. My gosh, right? If that's what's standing between us. And so it's being able to say, here's what I want. I want you to help around the house more. I want you to open your eyes and see that I work a full-time job too.

And then I have a full-time job taking care of the kids at home. I want you to help. And that's a different level of I want to be able to tell you, I think you look really good in these shorts and that shirt and have you not throw a grown-man temper tantrum. Like, how dare, right? Disrespectment. That's silly, right? Well, that's interesting you say this because the next question is my husband says he shouldn't have to change any diapers because he works and I'm a stay-at-home mom. Is he right?

It's psychotic. Moron. No. That's idiotic, dude. That's just dumb. I don't even have a phrase for that. That's dumb. But how does she handle that? Yeah, they need to go see a professional therapist quick. Because that marriage is fragile. Yeah. So the Gottman's talk about the four horsemen of the apocalypse of the relationship apocalypse and one of the worst one is contempt. It's this idea of, I'm, I remember like when you're swimming, the lifeguard stand? I'm looking at our relationship from up here. Yeah. Because I go to work every day. I felt that so much in a previous relationship.

I do this and I'm talking down at you. It's very self-righteous. You do those things. And forget the division of labor in that situation. Go be involved with your kids. Put down the video game controller. Put down the remote control. And who cares?

It's a basketball game. The season will start up next year. Be with your kid. Right? And I often find that that comes from what I dealt with, which was, I don't know how to change a diaper. I don't know how to be present with the little lump of a human that doesn't like me or want me. It just wants my wife. Because she's got, their heartbeats are synced up because they spent nine months together and she's got food. Right. And I don't, that baby just is designed to want her for a few years. I don't know how to change a diaper. And so I had to learn to lean in and not get myself worth from a screaming nine month old. I just go do the next right thing. which is, I'm going to change that diver. I'm going to be involved with this. This person says, my husband is so good at having fun, but lacking in the ability to lead and plan for our family.

How can I encourage this? So it sounds like he kind of has like Peter Pan syndrome. Yeah, but also is, so now I'm going to get myself in trouble with your women listeners. That's my house. My wife is a listmaker. She thinks things through. She's like, yeah, but we have to wake up tomorrow. I'm like, no, that's a problem for future us.

Let's do it right now, right? right and she's talked to me about you get to be the fun parent you swoop in here from out of town you're on the road you come home and you're like let's skip school and let's all go out yeah and she's like they have to go to school and i'm the one who gets the emails from the teacher and so partly that's her sitting down and saying hey here's what this looks like and i want your help in some of these other areas i and we just had this conversation i have a 15 year old and he was struggling in a class. And my wife said, my relationship with him is becoming about this class. And I want to not have that be the case. I want you to step in on it. And I had to say he has nine portals

where his grades are. I don't even know how to log into these systems. Will you teach me how to log into that? And that was me saying, I'm that detached from our kids. I don't even know how to check his grades. Yeah. And that was her ex-tailing and saying he doesn't know how to do that, not because he doesn't love us, but because that's been my role in here. And so right, so we're figuring this out together. Most men learn, I'm not going to help in the kitchen because I do it wrong every time. Well, hold on. You need to load the dishwasher like this or put the cups in this way or put them up. Guys just learn, I don't know how to do that right.

And so there's also, when you get the help, sometimes it's awesome just to exhale and say, that's not how I would have put those dishes away, but the dishes got put away. Yeah. Right? It's not how I would have planned this event, but it got planned. And then when the event is over and we get home, it's like, hey, so I want you to plan another thing and we have to remember that the kids are four and they can't do roller coasters right so it's it's planning it's teaching each other how to do this stuff as we go if i had to guess i would say when she

says he doesn't plan for our family he's lacking the ability to lead you're saying like it's okay if maybe the woman is the one that's more organized and doing those types of things and then he kind of steps in but i bet she feels like well that's what leading is like he's not leading because he's not planning yeah but often often in a house because look at him he goes to work He gets his job done. Yeah. I remember I left a spreadsheet up. I was responsible for millions of dollars of revenue expense accounts at the universities.

I worked at all the housing, the meal plans, all that stuff. And I didn't do the checkbook right. And I remember I left a spreadsheet up and my wife came and she's like, who are you? It was this long spreadsheet where I was running these expense accounts and I had a reputation for always coming in under budget, always. And she was like, how do you? And I had learned in my house, I'm just going to let you do that. Right? And so often leading is you'll do it my way instead of let's do this thing together.

And so guys learn, okay, I'm just going to say, I don't do this right. If he's a complete jerk and does have Peter Pan syndrome, nobody needs to plan. Then he's probably not holding down a job either. And he's probably never been able to do it right. Have you seen the Instagram meme where it's like, thank God my wife drives to the store with me now. So I know when all the green lights and red lights are coming. Right? And so it may be that she needs to sit down and say, I've filled this vacuum because I had a picture of what I thought my house should look like.

And I realized I took this from you and you felt dumb. Yeah. And so every time you did plan something, I critiqued it or I was mean about it or I was ugly about it. And so you've just stopped and I'm sorry. So this next question is kind of in the same vein, but a little bit more extreme. She says, I feel like my husband lacks purpose and ambition. It is so unattractive. Is this fixable?

That's hard. That one's hard. Yeah. when you marry the fun guy at the party, that's the opposite of the guy. Yeah. This guy just wants to play video games. Yeah,

that's a hard conversation. And usually that's a guy that doesn't have other men in his life that are men of value, right? That are saying, like, what? You just sit like, dude, you got to be better than that. Yeah. It's hard to hear from your wife because it sounds like a mother. And usually... It comes off as nagging.

Well, usually, yeah, she's become, she's got a second or third kid. It's her husband. And that's a tough place to. find yourself because he can't hear it from her because he's heard it from his own mom his whole life and so often that has to you have to hear that from another man this person says my husband makes a lot of money for our family but is absolutely miserable how do i support him when we need this job but he hates it and his mental health is suffering she's framed that as a need instead of i want this i want my suburb and i want my tahoe i want this nice house i want us to be able to go to the beach every summer

and i'm watching my husband die and we had a really hard moment. After my second book, I was in the middle of writing a second book and I grew up with not very much. My dad was a policeman and then he became a minister halfway through my, like, we didn't have anything. My wife was raised by school teachers. When I stepped into this world and then my show took off and then the first book went number one, like, I didn't understand what money meant, right? I knew it, but I didn't know what it meant like in my guts. And I'll never forget this. I was sick. I was coming off of being sick for 10 days. My family had just left. And you know this when your family comes and they stay like four days too long and they know it and you know it.

And everyone's just like, but they're stuck. And then my manager called. And I was in my basement gym and he called and I just started cheering because we'd gotten two speaking gigs that were going to be shape shifters for us. It was like, it's going to be a big deal. And you know that world. Yep. And I'm cheering. And she comes down.

She's like, what are you yelling about? And I was like, wait a guy. And she normally is very, she's the Xanax in our family. She's very calm and measured. And she came and got real close. which is not like her. And she said, I'm watching my husband die and I'm watching him cheer the whole way.

And then she said something that was a shift for me. She backed up and I got upset, mad. And she said, I told you, I would never tell you no when I married you. So go do your speaking gigs, go travel around the country, do your music. I like going to comedy clubs, go to your comedy and do your stuff.

But she says, don't say it's for me and the kids. This is for you and your ego. And then she said, we have enough. and when she left, I realized, I don't have a psychology for that word. I didn't know what that meant. But it took her saying, I would rather drive an old used corolla and live in a three-bedroom, two-bath house, and we all share a bathroom, then you die. Yeah. And so this, we need this job.

I'm married to somebody who is willing to say, we'll make do, but I want you. And I'd rather have a healthy and whole husband show up here at home than have all of the stuff. and so I always want to challenge somebody on that we need. If you want it, cool, be honest about that. But if you need it, you can move to Nebraska where it's cheaper to live and you can do some things to get your husband back, right? Or to let him exhale.

But when he hears, we need this, we need this. Okay. That's a lot of pressure. That he's being a dutiful guy. And he's going to go die on that white horse. This person says, my spouse is starting to get too overweight and it's hindering my desire to be intimate with him. Yeah, I have to sit down and be honest.

Secrets will dissolve a marriage. They'll ruin it. They'll dissolve a dating relationship. And I'll also say you can weaponize truth. So how do you motivate your husband, for example, in this scenario, to start working out again without emasculating him? It's like people call them like, hey, how do I tell my kid they're on the screen too much without like making them frustrated? I'm like, you can't control how they feel. Yeah. What you can control is how you show up and how honest you are. That's my, that's my challenge with our political discourse these days is people weaponize truth. It's true, and you don't have to say it like that. Does that make sense? Yep. And so you can sit down and be like,

you've gotten too fat, you've gotten overweight, and you disgust me in the bedroom now. You can do that. What any marriage therapist will tell you is never start those conversations with the word you always start with I. I'm struggling. I'm worried about your health. I grew up in a house from my dad was overweight and he couldn't play with us and he just started watching the TV. TV, I'm struggling with being attracted to you and I'm worried about us. That's an invitation when you say the word I. And if he chooses to hear that as how dare you in emasculating, he's made that choice, not you.

But to dance on eggshells for, I want to say something that is true in our home, but I'm worried about how they are going to receive it, then what, that's how secrets are, you just sit on it. You sit on it. And you start having one day less sex, two days less. The distance grows. And if he's somebody that deals with a lack of connection by eating, some do it with drinking, some do it with pornography, some do it with scrolling, some do it with online gambling.

Everybody's trying to heal that disconnection with a thing, then it exacerbates the problem. My spouse frequently texts co-workers of the opposite sex outside of work hours about non-work-related things. Is this a red flag? If you have sat down and said, it makes me uncomfortable when you're texting. other people, then yes. And it probably depends on who and what the needs are. If it's some of my old friends that are my buddy's wives, I don't know. Like that, that's not a red flag for me. Here's the red flag if he deletes the text. If he flips over the phone, if you don't have a code to his phone, if he hides it from you. If there's any sort of secrecy, then yeah, it's a

huge red flag. If you have said, hey, this makes me feel uncomfortable. Um, I have, I have a buddy. He is one of my closest friends in the world. Him and his wife and my wife are super tight. Every time he texts her, he includes me in it. Yeah, that's how I feel. I feel like when I'm married, that's what I've always thought. If I needed to text a man something, then I would just do it in a group chat with like their spouse, my spouse. I don't understand why you would need to do that apart from them. For me, it's, he's a writer and she's a writer. And so it may be like something And on a draft, she sent him or something. And I'm like, dude, I don't want to be involved in this tech.

Yeah. But there's a level of trust there. Yeah. And I also highly respect him saying, I don't, I want to be so far above her approach that there's never like I totally respect that. Yeah. And if I ever felt uncomfortable, like, I did text you a lot. Then I can say either that makes me feel uncomfortable or I can dump it on you. You're doing.

The integrist thing to do is to say. it makes me feel uncomfortable when you're texting other people. And I'm asking you, I want, I would prefer you to not text people that you're not other than me. It makes me feel less than in this house. Okay, let's talk about the part of summer we don't post on Instagram. Razor burn, bikini wax bumps, and irritation in all the wrong places. You need active skin repair in your routine. This product is powered by HOCI, which is a naturally occurring molecule made by your own white blood cells to heal skin and kill bacteria.

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He said, I really can't stand this. I'm not sure she's ready to be a wife. Is this a valid deal breaker? She should not marry you. It's just good grief. People are messy. People are clean. Here's what's awesome beneath religion, money, beliefs, political.

The number one characteristic, the variable that determines whether you have a good marriage or not are you all friends. And here's what funny. I have a friend named John who's super comically messy. For years, we've made fun of him. We've laughed. We've just cleaned up. He's just a messy guy. He's an incredible man, a great husband.

He's literally stood in front of me during altercations when we were younger. Like he will take any, he is a ride or die. I love that. And it has never occurred to me on the way home from watching the fights at his house when the house is messy or when he leaves my house to think, what is he trying to say about our friendship? It's never occurred to me. He's my friend.

He's taken, like, right? He's willing to go to jail for me. He's a friend. And yet I will leave his house and that dude's so ridiculous, so messy. And he's my best friend. And I drive home and there's some towels in a hamper. And I instantly go, what is my wife trying to say? Just fold the stupid towels.

You know what I mean? Fold the towels. Yep. And if there came a thing in my marriage, we had two sinks, but I would shave and I would swish it around, but there would still be some of those little hairs. And early on in my marriage, my wife said, hey, I know this isn't a huge deal. But when I see those, I want to stab you.

Like, it make you not alive. And I was like, I will clean those, right? But it was owning this is about me, not about you. And so if you get married and or you see somebody and say, hey, like, there's the hamper right there. And you put the clothes like right by it. You just like put them in there. You can do one or two things. You can pick up the clothes and just drop in the hamper and go about your day.

It takes one second. Or you can choose to make it this big existential. She doesn't respect us. She's this. Or if you get in her car, I don't want to out my wife on this shit. I get in the car sometime and there's like so much stuff shoved in that little pocket of the door. I can just clean it up. Or I can go one more.

I can just hire somebody to come clean the car up because we're in a season of blessing right now. A cool thing I see with my son when he was really young is every Sunday night, we would go just fill mom's car up with gas. instead of being the guy that's like the core's always on the I know my wife hates getting gas and I've come to learn she doesn't super feel safe sometimes downtown getting gas by herself

That's the scariest place to be Never occurred to me I'm a 6'2 200 pound Texan I never incurred to me to be scared at a gas station Oh yeah I'll drive out of the way To go to a safer gas station What a gift that I can throw my son in the core We get 30 minutes of just father's son's silly time

We sing real loud I'm trying to teach him The great old metal classics and he's in the 80s country or whatever. I can, we have some great time, and I can say, hey, this is how a dad, a husband loves his wife.

I can take that. Or I can sit there and get all dramatic and give myself a stroke on, you know what I mean? Like, what a dumb way to live, dude. Pick it up. This girl says, my fiance wants me to work on being more peaceful

and less stressed out after working all day. He says, I don't want to marry myself and is worried that if I can't handle work stress, I won't be able to handle the stress of kids. Is this a valid criticism or unfair since as a single woman, I have no choice but to work as hard as I do right now?

I have a little daughter. My big dirty secret was I had like one of the top parenting mental health shows in the country and my daughter wouldn't hug me. And it was heartbreaking. And at first it was funny when she was younger and then it got frustrating. And then it got like, hey, I'm bigger than you.

You have to hug your dad. Like it became like me trying to pose my will. And then it was just it broke my heart. And it was her saying when my wife said, hate and she used my own words against me which is she often not she's not against me but with me and she said has it ever occurred to you that our daughter's little bitty teeny tiny body um has identified you as not safe and i was like they don't swear i'm a good dad she goes oh no no no no you're the best possible dad but we all know i was like y'all know what and she said you have a

nuclear reactor right here we feel it and we all know just like keep space and my son he keeps space by hugging by like, you're a be all right, dad. And I got upset and frustrated me and I went and sat down with a therapist. And I ended up saying some stuff that I hadn't told anybody ever about what happened I was a kid. And so I walked around with this thing

that my daughter had the sense to she could feel it. And it was about nine months later that we were doing something and I said the words, Josephine, will you get off me? And I remember being like, like, oh my gosh. Like, I'm a human jungle gym for her now. But it was, I needed to go find peace.

And money wasn't doing it in success, wasn't doing it in healthy kids and a good marriage wasn't doing it. So I think that, like, I want you to come home and have peace here is a valid way. Like, I see something in you that you don't see and I want you to have this experience. Yeah. The challenge is when you try to extrapolate it to, because if you don't do this, then maybe one day you won't, that's where it gets to be. like you're playing like quarterback Dr. Phil in your house. And I don't know that that's fair, right? It's easier to say because one day you, it's harder to say when I've had a crazy day,

I want to come home and have a home that's peaceful and you come home wired up and I love you so much. But I want us to be able to drop our shoulders when we get home. And I don't want to feel like I'm coming home to an electric fence. Me as a woman hearing that that doesn't make me like immediately defensive. It's an invitation. Yeah, it's an invitation. And also it's like asking the question, you know,

I see this. I want this for you. I want this for us. How can I help you to get to that point? How can I love you today? Yeah. Just today. Yeah. Because very few people want to be a charity project. But how can I love you today? And that's a scary question for a guy to ask. And it's a scary question for a single woman who's just grinding and crushing it. And it's hard. It's hard, hard, hard, hard, hard. It's hard to come home and flip that switch. To her point also, she's saying, like, I'm a single woman right now. So, like, grinding it out at work is all I know. once I'm married and once we're having a family, you know, seasons change, maybe things will change. Right. But it's usually that inner machine that's running. Yeah. That may not be come from work. Work may be a way that you're trying to solve that inner angst. Wow. I'm going to work. I'm going to crush it. And I'm going to make it. I don't need nobody. And I can do it all on my own and look at this and look at this and look at this.

I think that's the greatest lie of the 21st century for women is now that you can, my mind. My mom, My mom, this is not a long time ago. My mom was not allowed to get a checking account without my dad's signature when they got married. That was a law, right? That was not long ago. And so this idea that you don't need men for anything has turned into you shouldn't need anyone for anything ever.

And that's just not true. It's not true. And so you've got a group of a whole generation of people trying to earn that place in their world and realizing there's no place for me to drop. my shoulders. The question that saved my marriage is, how do you want this house to feel like when you walk in? And we reverse engineered that. And my wife always made fun of me. I was a big like, forget your feelings. Let's just go do that. She said, no, no, how do you want this house to feel when you walk in?

And I told her, I want you to be happy that I'm here. Yeah. And she said, okay, that starts three days before. When you don't eat right, you get real grumpy because you don't sleep well. And when you don't exercise, you get pent up. And you start poking at everybody. And and and and and vice versa. She took her, you And I was able to speak into it as well. But it was a sense of how we want this has to feel. And I don't think any of us have a psychology for what peace feels like. I don't think we know what that feels like. Because even when we're at peace, we're just told, oh, yeah, well, somebody else is hurting

and somebody else said this. And can you believe we don't have a place for peace. And that's just very unnatural for our bodies. This girl says when I first got with my boyfriend, he said he was so attracted to me for having a really successful career and how hot it was about the amount of money that I make. He even said it's his type and he typically only dates high achieving women. Now he's saying he hates how I'm always stressed out that I don't cook enough for him due to how much I work outside the home. Why the switch? The dudes your listeners are involved with, man.

It's crazy. It's such a bizarre picture of masculinity out there in the world, man. That's wildcats. Is that what the problem is? The crux of these types of questions that these men have a warped idea of masculinity. A completely dysfunctional idea of masculinity. So explain that. What are they thinking and what is the correct way?

The bravest thing in the 21st century is not joining a jiu-jitsu gym. I trained with MMA fighters for years. I know that. Getting kicked in the head is not fun. It's not brave. It's what everybody does. I've got a bunch of tattoos. Getting tattoos is not brave anymore.

When Joe did it, Rogan did it or when the old punk rockers did it in the 70s, they were saying to the world, I will never have another job other than this. That's not the case anymore. They're CEOs with sleeves now, right? It's not brave. So really doing what's the next most courageous, brave thing is finding the thing you don't know how to do. The thing that exposes you the most.

And what is that? It's being comfortable sitting down with somebody and saying, you are freaking successful and you make twice as much money than I do. And I had this picture in my head that my wife would always just make dinner for me. I don't know where that picture came from or maybe it came from my childhood or maybe it came.

And that's not the world I live in. So I have two choices. I can just go make dinner for us because that's awesome. And I'm going to learn how to cook and be amazing. And I'm going to check out some of these awesome YouTube videos where these dudes are amazing cooks and they're awesome. Or I need to find somebody who makes less money than me and who has a different picture of what home looks like because I'm that insecure. I mean, it's that simple. So you think it's an insecurity thing?

100%. It's ego. It's ego. But why would he be telling her I'm into this? This is my type. Like, oh, wow. Like this is how much money you make that's so hot. and then say, I don't like this.

You're not cooking enough for me at home. It's a crazy news flash. But sometimes guys say things at the beginning of a relationship. It's breaking news. I always tell people, don't say everything that you feel. And especially don't say everything that you think, especially early on in a relationship. Because you can get home from date three or four and say, like,

I love this person. I love being with this person. This person's amazing. In month two and three, you realize, oh, they have a different vision for that. life than I do. But if you go saying everything you feel day one, you get in these situations where like now somebody feels like they get whiplash because making this much money comes with this much work. And that means I have this little time to do these other things. Yeah. And also, by the way,

that's a good relationship is finding out those places where we like, oh, I had this picture of what this is what wife looked like. And it's like, oh, I have this picture of what wife looks like. Let's figure that out. Yeah. That doesn't have to be a make a break or a or a, oh yeah, like, I don't know. That's, that's where the good stuff is. I think we conflate values and beliefs. How so? My wife and I share the same values. We both believe in God. We both believe in fidelity. We both believe in curiosity first, always. We have very like ironclad values. Dude, our beliefs are all over the place. We believe very. different things. It's why you read books. It's why you listen to podcasts so you can learn new stuff. And so we both believe in God. But we've had various, varying different, like, belief

structures on what that looks like and what church looks like. And because curiosity is also a value, instead of being like, in this house, it's this, it's this breath. Like, dude, tell me about that. Like, we're, like, I don't, I don't have that picture. Like, tell me more about that. And I know, I'm never going to leave. She's never going to leave. And we're not unmoored. And so when I went through my five or six years of not believing in any of this stuff, other than there's something bigger than us out there, but all the stuff is theater. It's all silly. It didn't threaten our marriage because like, you believe something different.

That's cool. And it wasn't this, it wasn't existential. Does that make sense? Yeah. This girl says, I've been with my boyfriend for two years. When I try to talk about the future, he gets anxious and says, let's just let life happen. Should I be worried? I don't know.

I mean, that was me. and so I wouldn't recommend it. When I hear something like that, I hear two things. Either one, he doesn't want to marry you and he doesn't know what to tell you, or he is planning to propose and that's what he's like, oh, let's just let life happen. Like, things are happening. Or I think the third one is, I think there are, like,

overnight we've pulled every institution to the ground. We collapsed church, like church attendants fell off a cliff. We used to all think that, like, going to the doctor, like, that our doctor wanted us to be, we don't believe that, even if it's true. And I've got tons of buddies who are physicians, like they really care about people. Nobody believes that anymore.

Yeah. We used to think that we disagree with the government and there was some back and forth, but that they wanted what was best for us. We don't believe that anymore. We've pulled every institution apart and one of those remaining institutions that's crumbling before us

is the idea that you have to get married. Why would we even get the government involved? We don't need a certificate to say that we love each other. I've heard that before. We're going to let this go really hard. Like, we're going to work really hard. It's fun. why do we have to fill in the blank?

And so I hear that as a more of an existential question. Like, let's just wake up in 10 years. And if we still love each other, if we still feel this way for each other, then great. That'd be awesome. So she has to decide within herself, is that something I'd be happy with?

Or do I, am I someone that I want to ring? I want actually to be officially married sooner rather than later. Let's have a bigger conversation about what do we think the role of marriage plays in the world. Yeah. I got asked a question 18 months ago at a signing line in Los Angeles

and it unspooled me. a woman just was, you know, and you sign stuff and you kind of go into like a little. Yeah. And they're like, I have 30 seconds with him. I'm going to give my number one question. And they do that to you. And you're like taking off guard. You're washing your hands in the bathroom. And somebody comes up. Hey, Alex. I'm like, whoa. Yeah, what's going? Hey, real quick. I cheated on my husband and with his brother. And I'm kind of suicidal. What should I do? And you're like, what do you do? Like, I just got it, right?

But she said, hey, does marriage still, does it still work the 21st century? And I was like, well, I went right into a stock answer like, well, you know, me, and she goes, no, no, no, I know it worked out for you and your wife. Is it still something that has value? I didn't have the financial. I didn't have the hell. I didn't have the data back up. Because you have this huge group of men growing online right now, you know, the red pillars.

Have you dove in this? It's just madness. Because they're saying, you know, marriage, it's contractually and legally cited with the woman. a trap for men because it goes sideways, then she gets everything. The data says that men live up to nine years longer. They make more money comically, substantially more. They have more and better sex married. So all that, it's just nonsense. It's just not factually accurate. But it sent me on an 18-month rabbit hole to be like, is this actually like the best, should I be telling people to do this? And it was awesome to come back to, oh yeah, it's like the foundation of a civilization. It's two people saying, no,

we're anchored in and life's going to be really hard. And those ropes are going to fray, fray, fray, fray, fray, fray, fray, but we're going to hang in there. That is a larger ideology than people think. Yeah, it's a fraying institution. It's massively growing with young single men. That's right. It's huge. This person says, should you wait to marry someone until their debt is paid off? No. And I work for Dave Ramsey for crying out loud. I'm telling you no. I wouldn't even anchor it on debt. I would say marry somebody who's interested in being free. Okay. And y'all two decide, what you do the next day, not a bank. As for me and my wife, we would rather drive a used

Camry, then I have to go to work in a job that's killing me and a job that takes me away from my family because I told another car company, if you let me have the car now, I'll pay you back over the next seven years. And so doesn't matter how bad my job. It doesn't matter how sick I am, doesn't matter how depressed I am, I got to go to work because that bank owns me or that that car company owns me or that mortgage company owns me. I'd rather buy a smaller house that we can pay off in a few years or figure that out or in 10 years we're going to pay this thing off, then have a cool Instagram feed, but always know that Sally Mae owns us. Fannie Mae owns our family. This wife says, I want to do the debt snowball and my husband doesn't think it's a good idea.

He says, I'm the one with the money problem and wants to do a consolidation and pay that off. Do you agree? No. No. All consolidation is, is just it's a dog and pony show. It's just moving your debt around and having fun with it. What are the most dangerous ways to handle conflict in a marriage? To attack each other, either with the truth or to attack each other with passive aggression, or the third one is to not address it, to just have proxy wars. It's not about the cup you left on the counter. It's this pervasive sense.

You don't see how hard I work every day. It's not about you're always on your phone. It is like you work all day, and I feel like I'm the third place in this house. So when you have these proxy wars, you end up, then he goes to work and he's like, man, she keeps hassling me about where I put the cups in the dishwasher. That's not the fight. Right. Or she never wants to have sex with me anymore. Like, that's not the fight.

Or he never, that's not the fight. The real fight is, I miss you. The real fight is, is we have two kids now. We have a totally different marriage and you still want me to be your girlfriend. And I want you to be 55 years old. And neither of those things are true. And so let's have the real conversation. My spouse is addicted to their phone.

When we have a chance to be together, it's all he wants to do. I think that's a pervasive nightmare in American families. What do you guys do at home? We're fortunate to have a 15-year-old. And I'm fortunate to be pretty outspoken publicly about how ed tech has destroyed our schools from the inside out. Oh, yeah. And my wife was an education professor. I was an education professor.

And so then we have a kid who's in fifth grade. It was the only one without a smartphone. phone. And so early on, we had to start setting these boundaries. And we both, my wife and I both know, kids don't listen to a word you say. They just watch you. You want to teach your kid out of respect women, treat your wife right. Treat that woman who's running all of the stations at work as your waitress because the other two people didn't show up. Let your kid see. Look how hard she's working. I know our food came an hour late. Look how hard she's working. We're going to double her tip. We're going to triple her tip. Let your kids see that. That's how they learn how to respect people.

Similarly, I have a kid where we're telling him, be on your phone all the time, we'll destroy your soul. And so then me and my wife are like, well, crap, we've got to get off our phones. Yeah, you got to leave by example. You got to leave by example. So some little things like social media is a tool.

It is a drill. And you and I, we build houses for a living. And so it's a tool that we can't not use, but it would be silly if we took a drill to dinner with us. And while our partner was talking, we're just going, that would be insane. If we took a drill to church, Or if we took our drill to the DMV and we're just like in there going,

that'd be nuts. And so it's a tool. And I have to have it. So I have it on a separate phone. And so I've got my phone phone that Drew's holding. And my social media phone is in my bag next to my laptop because it's a tool for work. And I have to use it as such. Gosh, that is a brilliant idea to put it on a separate phone.

I need to do that. Here's the day. I didn't have social media. And by the way, that's the other lie. I was the chief student affairs officer at a billion dollar college. I got the top of my field at my dream school. and I had no social media. You don't have to have it.

You don't. It's just simply not true. I work with college students. You got to be with this. I didn't have it. And it made me better at my job, not having it. That's number one. The second one is when I got this job,

when I started speaking and writing and being on the radio, I had to have it. It was a tool. And about a year and a half in, I was in my bathroom, in my closet. So I'm in my closet with a door shut,

in a bathroom with a door shut. In my bedroom with a door shut. My kids are running around out there all loud. My wife is doing something. And I'm just scrolling. And I remember laughing. I laughed out loud. And I was like, oh, God, it got me. Yeah. They're better than me. And so thinking I can do this recreationally is false. They're better than you. It's the best cocaine ever created. It really is. Because it's cocaine wrapped up in compassion or it's cocaine wrapped up in comparison or or optimism. It's a lie. It's fake. And so I have to know they are better than me.

I work for Dave Ramsey. I go to Vegas and sometimes I have a, I love blackjack. It's fun. I like doing silly things, but it's money that I can set on fire on my kitchen table and it's not going to hurt my family. This, if I find myself scrolling, it's going to have to be, I'm going to intentionally unplug, unhook from life and just fart some time away. And that's not a bad thing, but it's something I have to do intentionally. Otherwise, I'll wake up and it'll be an hour and a half later. I'm still just down a rabbit hole. One of my friends who's a mom of five, she took Instagram off of her phone and then she only logs in, when she does like laptop time. So she'll log in to Instagram on her computer and look at it there for a few minutes a day and then shut the laptop. And that's helped her a lot. You got to put barriers. Yeah. Because they're better than you. I thought that was a good idea. They're better than you. Yes. And I got teenagers and we started this back in sixth grade. All the kids come to our house. I always wanted to have the house where everybody came. Yep. We have a bowl. And it started with my wife calling all their parents. And this is awkward. It could be awkward. Hey, we don't do internet at the house and we don't have kids running on smartphones. I can protect my kid, but I don't want some

greater being saying like look what I found right and so all the parents knew they had my wife's number and if you all need anything you can text me but when they come over to house all the phones go in a bowl or y'all can keep them yep and when they were younger all the kids would show up and their parents would take their phones and then now that they're teenagers we have high school kids running out it's it's almost like a relief they drop them in the in the bucket and they go run up and do their crazy have whatever fun and it's such a I love that we're not like like like, stop, they come down and they can check their phone if they need to text somebody or whatever. It's fine.

But I want it in a central place where they can go be kids. Yeah. Then go laugh and go figure stuff out. And it's amazing watching unplugged teenagers become human again. My nighttime routine used to be an afterthought. Scroll my phone, crash and scratchy sheets, wake up tired. But now it's my favorite part of the day. Thanks to cozy earth.

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My mom was like in tears. She said, Alex, these are the nicest pajamas I've ever owned. She was floored. She had me feel them when I came over. It's buttery soft and actually sleeps cooler than cotton. And now my bed feels like a spa. So yours will too. Cozy Earth also gives you a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty.

So it's basically risk-free. Go to cozyearth.com, use code Alex for 40% off. That's cozy earth.com. Code Alex for 40% off. People keep asking what skincare I'm using lately, and I'm like, it's not a serum. It's cowboy colostrum. I mean, I do use some good serums, but my hair is thicker, less split ends, and stronger. Cowboy colostrum is packed with immunoglobulins, collagen-boosting peptides,

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fight over him perceiving my tone of voice as being disrespectful. He says it's a deal breaker. I want more time to work on it because I don't realize I'm doing it. He says I only get in a lot of number of chances before we break up and are incompatible for marriage. Run, run, run, run, run. That's a paternal control freak. That's not about respect and that's not about, no, run as fast as you can. Run as fast as you can.

And here's the thing. Ask somebody in your life, do I come on pretty hard? Uh-huh. Like, do I have a disrespectful tone? Yeah. I will say his name. My buddy Trevor in college. I was dating the woman who's my wife now.

And I got home and I said like, I can't believe, dude. She totally said this, this. And it was like a 30 seconds of silence. And he goes, are you serious right now? I go, yeah, can you believe that? And he goes, yes. That's how you always are. And I didn't know.

Like she was mirroring you? No, she just said like, hey, I don't like it when you talk like this or whatever. I swore all the time. It was a good kid. I love Jesus. I just had a real foul mouth. I just swir all the time. And still, I'm working on it.

But I swirre all the time. And I was like, can you believe she said? And he was like, are you for real? Yes. And it was a blind spot. I didn't know. I mean, I just didn't realize how pervasive it was. And so if you're dating somebody and they're like, hey, when you like suggest something,

you say it like I'm stupid. You come at me hard. That's a fair thing to go ask a couple of friends. Hey, do like, okay, be honest with me. Do I do this? And they'd be like, yeah, you kind of come on. Is that deal breaker territory or like we're wanting to get married so let's figure out how to work on this together territory? The deal breaker again it's a proxy war. The tone of voice is the proxy. The deal breaker is

it's hard for me to be engaged with you because whenever you talk to me about anything, you come on hard like it's, you're really critiquing me and criticizing me. I'm trying to stand this with you and it hurts when you talk like that. When there's something, I don't know, like turn left. I told you to turn left. You never turn left. stupid, then yeah, I'm out. Yeah. Right? But that's me sitting down saying, hey, like when I miss a turn, I'm not missing it. I'm trying to keep a safe.

Or I grew up and we got in a bunch of car wrecks because my dad didn't know how to drive. Like, there's a, there's a method to that madness. Oh, yeah. I get to talking and I just miss a turn. And then you can decide, I love that I'm married to a guy that just is all in. And he just gets to talk and he tells stories and he misses the turn. We're going to be five minutes late. That's fine.

Or you can say, no, I'm out. But that conversation is less about the tone of voice and it's more about, I love you. And this hurts when you talk to me like this. But then when you start throwing it into the, I gave you two chance. Shut up. You're not my kid. You're my boss.

We're building something together. Right. Yeah. And silly. Run. Run. Run. Run.

Is it a red flag if you're talking about engagement and someone in the relationship wants to involve trusted Christian wise counsel for help, solving a repeated argument instead of keeping it between the two of you? It doesn't matter with you. No. You have to get people in your life involved with those things. Yes. Yes. And more yes. My buddy Rachel Cruz, she said that her therapist, and I love this idea, there should be three couples that know every single solitary thing about y'all. The ups, the downs, the fights, the concerns, the temptations, everything. And what that does is it gives you a practice of not hiding from the things that haunt you.

Yeah. And that kind of gives that village community so that when things are really rough, you have people there pouring into lifting you up. They don't allow you to consider divorce. It's, you don't get to that spot. Right. Right. Because you have somebody that you're regularly saying,

dude, it's like month three and we haven't slept together. And like, well, dude, you've been working like, right? You have somebody to talk to or, yeah,

you all need to have a hard conversation, right? Before it gets to month six and then now coworkers like, you did a great job in that meeting yesterday. And suddenly that feels something in you. You're like, yeah. And now you're off to the racist, right? What is the best way to rebound after a fight when emotional walls are up and you're feeling disconnected?

Take a break. Yeah, take a break. When you go to fight or flight and it goes back to the bricks analogy we talked about earlier, the things that kept you safe as a kid will blow up your adult relationships. And so if when dad came home and you were a kid and you knew, I'm just going to, I'm just going to go my room, shut the door, do my homework. Then you're going to marry somebody who has attachment challenges and they want to be with you and you're like, I'm just going to disappear and say, hey, hey, right, and vice versa. And so when you go to fight or, flight when that your body is triggered your critical thinking's off it's off your body doesn't want you thinking is that a nice tiger at the front of the cave it just wants you safe and so it's a terrible time to try to solve a problem because the next person said my spouse shuts down when we argue how do we navigate out of that so that what you're saying would apply to that is that let them have a little break you get five minutes and we're coming back or 30 minutes come back but not letting them shut down can be a weapon right it can be it can be uh stonewalling it's one of the four horsemen it can be a way to i'm with holding connection and intimacy from you.

So a relationship I had, we had a big argument and I was, like, we didn't talk for like two days. And I was like, okay, very apologetic. Send an apology letter because I was working, traveling. I wasn't home. So I had to text it, a long apology. And was like, you know, I'd love to talk on the phone tonight. You know, let's repair this. Let's come back from this.

And it was like, no, I don't want to talk. And I was like, please, like, let's fix this. Let's solve this. And it was like, you're selfish, the fact that you keep. trying to talk about this when I'm asking you not to and then gave silent treatment for like two weeks. And that's just childish. Yeah. Yeah, that's just immature. And if someone has a long thing that they need to do, I always think it's worth a phone call or like a FaceTime. And I travel a lot too. Yeah. Okay, we got sideways. I love you. I'm not going anywhere. Right. And I'm going to,

I've written this thing down. I'm going to hit send on this. And when I get back, like, I've already got us a reservation at such and such a restaurant. Like, I want us to go sit down and have this conversation instead of if somebody's in fight or flight they're out and they get bombed with like a long text message yeah that's a lot it's a lot and also somebody starving somebody out affectionate wise or communication wise or intimacy wise that's not cool either so anytime you take a break it it always has to have a time limit on it I need two days or I need a break from this conversation I'm me my wife still do that now right and I just for like I'm at the end of this conversation for now. I need 30 minutes. I'm going for a walk. Yeah. Or let's circle back. I like putting a time limit on it.

I like saying 30 minutes an hour and then coming back. That's right. And if there's a big conversation, we almost always frame it with I'm going to commit to not shutting down. And I don't know why, but saying that on the front end is I'm going to commit to not shutting down. I'm going to stay present in this conversation. And my wife might say like, okay, then you can't bring your laptop then and you can't bring your phone. Like you got to be here. Cool. I'm going to show completely up. and I'm going to need you to stay with me and not get pokey. This person says, my spouse has a servant's heart and wants to help everyone, but now it's put us in a bad spot financially.

How do you not squander their gift while also protecting the family? That kind of service is not a gift. It's a protectionist measure. That's when somebody is using other people to make themselves feel good because you don't have the money to help right now. And so truly helping other people, like Jesus took time away. to pray by himself. I've got to get recentered because I'm about to go in and give everything I got and I got to get centered and I got like there was always these moments when he would pull away.

That's somebody that doesn't have that recharge. They're just letting it go and letting it go, which tells me that's pathological. That's somebody that is using other people to make themselves feel good, even if they can't afford it, if they're not sleeping, if they're not safe, if they're not whole, if their own family is falling up, it doesn't matter. I'm going to keep giving. I'm going to keep giving. I'm going to keep giving. This person, this is a deep one. How do I biblically submit to a husband struggling with alcoholism? Man, I think that's a reframing of the word submit. Here's what I would say. And you're the expert, so you say if I'm wrong.

Biblical submission, they have to be following Christ first and strong in their walk with Christ in order for you to biblically submit because they're supposed to be biblically submitting to God. That's the husband's role. So if he's struggling with alcoholism, he's not submitting to God. So therefore, I'm not sure the wife's role and if she's supposed to be submitting to him, if he's not following through on what he's supposed to do. I would probably reframe that in this way. I remember one of my, the most important professors

in my life during graduate school and counseling, she said, never ask somebody why they're drinking. Always ask somebody, my goodness, what happened in your life, that this is the best way your body's figured out how to get through a day. And so I think somebody can follow Christ and be completely dedicated to that and be not well.

The hardest part about sitting with people in recovery is alcohol works. It's pretty good point. pornography works. Like, any, feel you're working 500 hours a week that works. It helps numb away pain and challenge. And so I wouldn't frame it that way as much as

you have an obligation to be safe. Yeah. And your husband has put you in a position that's not safe. And so it's not a matter of submitting, and I'm just gotta, I just gotta take this, I just gotta take it. It is the greatest gift for both of you is for somebody to withdraw from the situation,

and get safe financially, emotionally, like literally physically. So this girl says, I recently tried asking my husband, John's question, how can I best love you today? He told me it was a stupid question and said, I should already know. I feel defeated. Yeah, you should feel defeated because you're married to a jerk. That's really mean. I don't have a great solution for you, but that's just, that's hard. Yeah, you should have your heartbroken when the person you love responds to you in that way. This person says, my spouse never apologizes.

They claim they don't feel remorseful about things or that they genuinely feel like they did nothing wrong. I don't know how to get out of this loophole. possibly stop talking about the thing and talk about how the thing is impacting them use the word I so maybe less than you didn't even take the trash out

you didn't even apologize I didn't do anything wrong I'm working really hard and I forgot like I'm not going to say I'm sorry plus you're home all day like right that's different than

hey I don't feel like you're plugged I don't feel loved here yeah and if they say I don't care your marriage has bigger challenges when is the right time to admit that your marriage needs help the second

the only time I would say not to make a proclamation is in the middle of a fight. Well, this girl says about once a year, my spouse threatens divorce. I hate this. Yeah. That's right now, right the second.

Yeah. Because that's become a weapon, right? It's a way to reclaim power. When he starts feeling powerless, he's like, I'm just going to, I'm going to take my ball and go home.

And depending on what she does, that might mean, I'm going to take your economic security. I'm going to take your home. I'm going to take your cars. I'm going to take your kids for half the time. That's cruel. This person says,

when my partner is annoyed or mad at me, they call me terrible names like fat, useless, et cetera. Otherwise, they are warm and loving, but they never apologize for this. They're not warm and loving. They said it's been 14 years should I stay. I think that brings into a broader question and all people of faith look at this differently. For me, the question of fidelity, the question of infidelity, if you will, is I think the church has narrowly defined that as intercourse with somebody else. I think you can cheat on your spouse with a golf course. I think you can cheat on your spouse with work. I think you can cheat on your spouse by

putting anything between you and your marriage. And that can be, I'm going to belittle you and treat you like crap and I'm going to make you feel small and I will always have a knife ready to like emotionally stab you. And I'll be fun and joyful. But you've seen those things where those bears, they train the bears for the movies and they're fun and playful until they eat you, right? You've got to have to be able to come home when you're married and drop your shoulders and say, I'm home. I'm home, all of me. Because if that's the case, she's probably why. walking on eggshells all the time. And that's a lack of fidelity.

That is a, that is, that is a marriage that or one person is cheating on the other. Like, I am taking your emotions and I'm just beating them into the ground. And because I have to retain power over you. And I don't know. So I've got a bigger, I, I really am reluctant to tell people to leave outside of physical abuse. Like, like, your health is in safety. But this one's pretty gnarly.

I've lost all respect for my husband after he lied twice about watching porn. is my marriage doomed? I'm more worried about her lack of her lost respect than I am, that her husband's struggling with pornography. No, I don't think any marriage like that is doomed, but I think they're going to have to come back to the table. Okay. And get to the deeper issues.

How do I recover after my husband told me, I don't love you how a husband should love a wife? Is he reading romance novels or something? Yeah. What does it even mean? That's how I would take it is that he's not feeling in love. Oh, well, fine, dude. That's just part.

I mean, you're not going to feel in love. for 70 years. But now how does she recover from that? Because now she's obviously going to be feeling insecure. Well, of course. That goes back to don't say everything that you feel. Don't say everything that you think.

You know what I mean? That's not always helpful. It's a weapon. It's a way to box somebody out. How can a marriage get back to what it was before my spouse cheated? I will give you, what I have come to believe

is the greatest analogy on this ever. It's from Estep Perel. She says this, when the twin towers were knocked down and they fell. No amount of hard work could have swept up all of that glass, all of that steel, all that dust, and rebuilt the Twin Towers with that same material. They fell and that was over. It's over.

It's a period at the end. There's two choices. You can walk away and let nature take its course and just leave it, walk away. Or you can call in some experts, excavate that site, build something arguably more beautiful that's a testament to what was, but also where we're headed. that's stronger, structurally stronger, you will never quote unquote get back. That's over. There's a period. The question is, do you want to build something totally new? And is that hard? Yes. Is it challenging? Yes. Is it scary? Yes. Can you do it? It could be amazing. What is a habit that you and your wife have that you think has tremendously strengthened your marriage? Asking each other every day, what's your picture of today look like. That's been probably the greatest gift. Just like what you've got coming up? How do you want it to look? What is your expectation of what this thing is going to be? Okay. Hey, my father-in-law just left.

He comes and stays with us for a few days, and he is awesome. But I always ask, what's your picture of your dad showing up? Because he's a pro-bass fisherman. The moment he walks in, I want to get to throw the rods in the truck and go fish in. And she wants to sit down and hang out with her dad. So me saying, hey, what's your picture of this look like? Because if I'm sitting there itching, like, let's go fishing, let's go fishing. And she's like, we're just sitting and chilling.

Then we're going to get into disagreement over a missed expectation. And if he shows up and we immediately leave, she's like, dude, my dad just came in town and he, right? So it's sitting. What's your picture this look like? And her saying, I want us to have dinner together tonight. I really want to just spend some time with my dad. And Sunday afternoon, I'd love for you guys to go fish. Awesome. I'm all in. But it's just aligning what that picture looks like. And that can be with sex. I could be with dinner. That can be with, hey, what do you need on the way home tonight? I need some quiet. What's your picture that looked like? And even the other night, my wife busted in and she, I was typing. I was doing something. And she goes, the kid. kids were in bed and she goes, I need to borrow your nervous system for 28 minutes, either Brooklyn

9-9 or the office, go. And I went and sat on the couch and she curled up like a Labrador just up against me. And we watched some hilarious rerun of a comedy show. And it was literally over. She goes, that's what I needed. And that was it. But it was like that very clear picture instead of her coming to try to try to try to try to try to try to try to her coming to try to try to try to. It was just a very clear. Here's the picture I need. Like, awesome. I'll make that happen. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture and it could be physically, emotionally, or spiritually. What would it be? Seek to be with, not right. I think our culture's got an obsession with being right. Was I right? Was on the right side? Was I did my team win? All those questions are like, am I right to leave him?

Am I right to stay? Is he right to say this? And I think that's the way our culture has shifted to look. The glasses we wear are what's the right answer? And if you ask any fitness influencer, what's the best workout? the really good ones will say, whichever one you'll keep doing, what's the best diet? Whichever one you're going to keep, you'll stick to and over time, right? And that's them choosing,

I'm going to be with you. And so when it comes to politics, come to faith, I'm going to be with you. When I look at, like, what did Jesus say versus what he do? He was with us. And then he stuck up for the least of these.

And then he said, hey, you don't have to live like this. Right. And I think we've got that out of order, which is when you get it all right, then you knock on my door and I'll decide if you can come in. I think we did too. And so I think it's about, dude, I'm going to choose to be with.

And then when you ask my opinion, I'll tell you. And then we're both anchored into the same value, which is I'm going to anchor, we're going to anchor with connection. Then we can solve this. Tell everybody the name of your show and what you cover on your podcast and how often new episodes come out. Man, we spent months, years trying to come up with a great title and we landed with the Dr. John Deloney show. That's fine.

You know how those branding conversations go. It's wild. It's Dr. John Deloney show, and I co-host the Ramsey show at Dave Ramsey and our other gang out there in Nashville. But the Dr. John Deloney show is the people call in, real people call in, and from all over the world with their relationship and mental health and emotional health stuff and their kid questions. And we try to figure it out live. What was the hardest question that really stumped you, somebody calling in? Like one of the most difficult relationship issues you've heard. It is somebody who is married to somebody or romantically involved with somebody who's.

evil, someone's mean. Someone who's just ugly. And they're wrapped up in that. And it's hard to untangle that. Yeah. Yeah. Or talking to somebody and there's not a good. It's really cool for me to be like, you need to get out of that relationship. And I also know the data of single moms, which means they're going to go into poverty. And they're not going to, their kids going to like have, so it's easy for me to be up here saying like, yeah. I know the ramifications of that. And so sometimes when they, somebody,

lays out a problem and I'm like yeah your solution here is going to be three years of hell for you and that's hard like those are hard moments how often do new episodes come out monday once you friday okay three days a week and where can they find you on instagram oh it's at john deloney again super creative i absolutely love this um this is one of my favorite episodes of the year by this awesome it's like rapid fire i don't get to just like let them rip i told you this is going to be good for social media like yeah i just did all my listener submitted questions okay here's the big one what's one you have i put them in there i know But you have like this is a, here's what you're modeling for them.

Okay. Vulnerability. This isn't like a me and them type of question. But big picture is I have this huge desire to get married and have a family. And then it's just been harder for me. And I think a lot of that is because of the career that I have. But what's ironic is that the career I have is literally helping other women be better moms and wives. Although I'm not in that part of my life.

So I think that's my biggest hurt is that I'm in this position to help others do that. and I have to wait. So that's like my biggest hurt and my biggest, like, vulnerability. When you are 50, what will you be glad that you traded? On the first day, I will say, if my husband says, hey, I would rather you be a stay-at-home mom, I would give all of this up in an instant. My biggest desire is to be a wife and a mother. So while I love this, and I do this because I feel like this is a mission from God that I am supposed to be doing this right now in my single season, I would give all of it away gladly to have that. So I am not the woman that's like, I am holding on to this girl boss life and I don't actually want to give it up. I mean,

I'm very open about, I'd be willing to give it up entirely or like, you know, you understand this life. Like, I can control my schedule and dial this way down if I want to and, you know, come and bulk record a bunch of stuff and be home 98% of the time. So I feel like those are conversations that I'm willing to have. What's hard when I'm dating is guys holding this against me like, because you work like this and have all this career and money and everything, do you really want to be a traditional wife and a mom? This is all very intimidating to me. You make more money than me. And I do want all of those things, but I need the opportunity to be able to live that out. I'm obviously not able to live that out as a single woman.

I think the challenge, I think this is for everybody, but is there's multiple layers to get to you. Yeah. Does that make sense? There's this. I want to be a traditional, whatever that means. I want to be this. I want to have a career. But there's layers to get to, like, who am I marrying?

Yeah. Who's this woman? I feel like I'm known or I feel like I'm loved. I'm seen and I'm loved by everyone but not know. That's right. So what's the path for somebody get to know you? I think the path is just understanding that I have more intricacies and flaws and obviously things that I'm going to have to work through as a human being, you know, coming together

with somebody. I'm not picture perfect how I am all the time on camera. But do you see when you date people, do you think they expect that? Perhaps. Perhaps it's being held against me. Like, in theory, there's all kinds of parenting and wifely things and whatever I want to do. But I also need the true patient, graceful leader. to help me learn how to get into that life

when I've been living as an independent woman who only knows how to be on my own for 30 plus years. So I need that person to be like, hey, like, I'm going to help you transition now into this part of life because I do want it. I have the desire to want it. But like, obviously, it's not going to come totally natural. I've never done it.

I've never, I don't know how to be a wife because I've never been a wife. So I need the man that's going to be like, I'm going to help you do this. We're going to do this together. And I also don't know how to be a husband because we're learning this together. And five years from now, maybe, and I hear this a lot,

I don't want to stay home all day. Yeah. Like, I don't know how to, I don't, now I feel like a terrible human, and I feel like I'm not as good, and I feel like I'm letting everybody. Like, and the husband's like, yeah, we had this picture, and now the picture's different. So what does that look like?

For whatever it's worth, I think the core Alex is worth getting to know. Thank you for saying that. Like, for real. Like, beneath all of the fancy lights and everything, that Alex is worth getting to know. Thank you. Thank you, John, for coming on Culture Apothecary. You bet. Thanks for inviting. After this interview, my skin is clear, my crops are watered, the sun is shining and my depression is cured. 10 out of 10 episode, if I do say so myself. I learned a ton, was encouraged,

and just have a sense of hope and peace about myself and my personal relationship, so I hope you do too. Please leave a five-star review and tell others why this episode resonated with you and share more in the Cute Servatives Facebook group. If you've never listened to the show before, the premise of this show is that we're on a mission to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And every guest brings their own unique remedy to do that. New episodes drop twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern, wherever you listen to podcasts, just make sure you're subscribed. I'm Alex Clark, and this is Culture Apothecary.